The best part about ranking the year’s best ambient/instrumental albums for as long as PopMatters has been is noting how things have shifted over time. On our first standalone list in 2018, classic synth soundscapes from the likes of M. Geddes Gengras rubbed elbows with the country-indebted twist on the genre from the great SUSS, which in turn contrasted against the grainy avant-jazz stylings of Los Angeles-based bassist Sam Wilkes.
This year’s list, meanwhile, hews towards more of the “traditionally minded” archetypes of the genre, as neo-classical orchestrations hit waves of calming digital backwash, and indie experimenters with a knack for the popping sounds of an ancient vinyl contort the medium into itself to create an oddly emotive Mobius strip of sound.
In short, the more that things change, the more everything remains the same. While there are always innovations and risk-takers in the ambient space, there is also nothing wrong with a more traditional approach, and the contribution from the occasional genre outsider who doesn’t know the rules is all it takes to get those who’ve been at this for decades to shake off their routines and push towards something more profound and new.
These songs from 2025’s best ambient releases are designed to transport the listener into a specific headspace, whether it be meditative, fraught, calming, or revealing. It often feels like these 15 records barely scratch the surface of what’s out there, but we hope this helps curate further discovery.
15. Markus Guentner — Black Dahlia (Affin)
Markus Guentner’s first ambient record, In Moll, came out when he was 20 years old. A clear student of Wolfgang Voigt and the entire Kompakt arsenal, Guentner has spent the following 25 years honing and expanding his craft. Black Dahlia is the first of three LPs he put out this year (four in you include his remix album). Still, while sometimes bleak in tone, this record pulls you in with its tragic beauty, as you see yourself floating in front of a black hole before it draws you into an inescapable orbit.
“Midnight Sun” is decorated with rolling waves of synths that evaporate in slow motion, as tiny pings and hisses scatter across the low end, waterbugs panicked on a liquid surface. “Humanity’s Shadow”, meanwhile, incorporates more live toms into its textures, drawing them into a gravitational well before slicing them until they skitter and break. With the persistent tones and whirring noises of “System Seizure”, one could be led to believe this album is more existential and dour.
However, there’s a quiet heart at its center, a voice that compels one from beyond the cosmos to stay locked in and explore its many nuances. At this rate, it doesn’t matter how many albums Geuntner releases in a calendar year, ‘cos they’re almost all going to draw us in.
14. Saapato — In Alaska (AKP)
The last time we checked in on Brendan Principato (via our Best Ambient Albums of 2024 list), his album On Fire Island was recorded on said landmass through the National Park Service, using a grant to capture the location’s lush sounds and add his own distinct, laid-back tones. His new record, In Alaska, lives up to its name, recorded in Juneau through an arrangement with the Alaska State Park Service. While the change from a woodland locale to a frozen one might prove drastic to some, Principato’s divine sense of melody remains fully intact.
In tracks like “6am Rainforest Drone”, a calm synth wash lies over the runtime until local wildlife gets up close to the mic, regaling us with quiet, curious chirps. In “Salmon Run”, bubbling synth lines get refracted as sunlight from a view below the water’s surface, swaying and shimmering, calm and flowing. Based on the title and location, In Alaska is appropriately ornate and chilled-out, locked in time, and ageless.
However, like Saapato’s last album, there is a warmth that emanates from what could have been cold, curated field recordings. Saapato’s sound is one of appreciation, which is then turned into some of the quietest and calming chords we’ve heard this year. There is no question of the quality of Saapato’s creations these days; the only question is “Where will he go and record next?”
13. j.o.y.s. — j.o.y.s. (Whited Sepulchre)
For Los Angeles resident Ramon Narvaez, the project j.o.y.s. is an acronym for “Jumping Out of Your Skin”. This can mean something to different people, but for the Jersey-born Narvaez, this meant finding himself alone in a Boyle Heights apartment, using just his electric guitar and a few pedals to craft an album that would be accentuated only by the slide guitar of his Brooklyn-based friend
Justin Gaynor. The result of their collaboration is a record that finds joy in the middle distance, using sparse surroundings to craft a basement galaxy filled with tiny stars. The eight-minute “River | Road” leans into a reverb-drenched wall of sound that hums with a reassuring glow before Gaynor’s guitar comes in to add a bit more narrative.
Nearly every competition on the outfit’s eponymous debut carries a similar weight: “Blue Water Prison” finds an ocean in every grain of TV static, the emotive “Yucca Valley” finds poetry in the endless repetition of two guitar chords, and the lithe “Lee & Leo” evokes the guitar of a 1950’s bubblegum pop song isolated in the mix and vaporwaved to bliss and back. Even after repeated listens, there are still several j.o.y.s. to be found within this record.
12. miffle — Goodbye, World! (Independent)
The key to miffle’s striking debut album Goodbye, World! is a song that isn’t even on the album. In the album’s liner notes, the mysterious Warsaw-based artist reveals that it is dedicated to a friend who passed away in April 2023. The only inference about what that processing mindset would be like would be on the B-side of the “static snow” single that preceded the record’s release.
In the short “April 7th”, the sound of distorted hammered dulcimers collides with the faint warning tones of phone lines, collapsing in on itself to create a profoundly sad totem to someone recently lost. The rest of Goodbye, World!, however, doesn’t exchange in such overt grief as much as it does a sweet sense of melancholy. In “Digital Blizzard”, the same guitar notes seem to echo and repeat at uneven intervals until, Bibio-style, the track fractures and evolves into something new, where notes warp and bend while still retaining their familiar shape.
The clattering “Losing Interest in the Things You Love” is a shifting, uneven track that evokes the busied, hurried mind finding things to do so as not to be weighed down by worried or introverted thoughts. As nonlinear as the album is, the tones and sounds circle a beating heart, slowed by innate sorrow, but beating all the same.
11. Nico Georis — Music Belongs to the Universe (Leaving)
Nico Georis has long been fascinated by the open skies of the California deserts, and his albums have all been quiet, piano-focused reflections on the feelings such vistas evoke. Outside of a (literal) mushroom-assisted side project released elsewhere this year, Music Belongs to the Universe feels like a step towards something new, something grander for Georis’s sonic scope and scale. The record moves away from the standup piano that had long been his signature and into pure synth work, while still retaining Georis’ unique style and perspective.
Tracks like “Weather Report II” exist in a universe where the listener is idle, observant, taking things in slowly. Meanwhile, “Relation Ships” again brings the classic live piano key plinks into the mix to conjure up desert ghosts visible only under Western stars. Georis’s sense of production has increased dramatically, as each track feels like a bold expansion of the pocket universes he conjured on previous records, yet he never once loses his shimmering sense of wonder.
Some artists might tickle the ivories, but under Georis’ fingers, he taps at the edge of the cosmos, resulting in a record that is as comfortable and familiar as it is flirting with the expansive and new. It may belong to the universe, but we’re happy this album belongs to us now.
10. Gareth Quinn Redmond — Múscailte (Sound As Language)
Any genre can be location-bound. We know that UK punk sounds different from its American counterpart, just as K-pop and J-pop often share a similar vibe but diverge in melodic approach. Ambient music is no different, and while Gareth Quinn Redmond hails from Ireland, he makes no bones about how much the Japanese masters of the genre inspire him. While he’s been putting out full-length albums since 2018, this year’s Múscailte is a direct echo of his 2021 pandemic-era release Oscailte.
Finding inspiration from the likes of Satoshi Ashikawa and Hiroshi Yoshimura, Redmond is particularly focused on bell tones with this record, as the cascading rings on the 11-minute closer “Brionglóidí / Críoch na Maidne” roll in and out of the mix, cascading and swirling, above the daily din of windchimes and into something more direct, blissful, and empowering.
Yet it’s not all bells and whistles (so to speak). The dry Moog tones of opener “Tae na Maidne” are casual, quiet, specific; bare footprints on reverent stone. While “Irish ambient” may take a moment to define itself, Redmond is already doing a great job of developing the genre in his own vision. It’s a truly lovely event.
9. Natasha Pirard — Fernande, Cecile (Deewee)
The casual passerby’s assessment of ambient as a genre is likely a stereotypical one: each record is a quiet, oscillating mood piece full of synths and twinkles; hit replay if you enjoyed. Yet like any genre, ambient is full of ambition, of challenges to the form, and even concept records. Natasha Pirard’s Fernande, Cecile is a concept album that, even if you didn’t know the context going in, remains a thoughtful and moving lesson.
The record’s first half, Fernande, is dedicated to her grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s. While not inherently a sad listen, it is a somber suite of songs, using field recordings of songbirds and held keypads to evoke a warm sorrow, the sound of hanging on to someone you’re about to lose. The second half, Cecile, is dedicated to Pirard’s compassionate mother, and tracks like “Changement de pas” feel smaller in scope but warmer in tone, as each record’s half is given different textural elements to differentiate them.
However, the melodic themes throughout both sides make for a consistent listen all the way through, using a musical motif to tell the story that, between these three women, there are differences. Still, they share the same story, with Pirard the one telling it, not with words but with lush, cathartic arrangements. It’s a quiet miracle of an album if we’ve ever heard one.
8. Matt McBane — Buoy (Gradient)
Before Buoy, Matt McBane was more interested in the contemporary classical scene, as his 2022 album Bathymetry used synths as its primary instrument while still working in a more suite-based mindset. For Buoy, however, he drops all artifice to craft a proper ambient record, albeit with his own conductor-minded perspective. In the album closer “Turn Around Again”, a sawing violin plays a line not too distant from an Irish folk melody, while a digital voice, run through a wave of pixelated filters, follows along in rhythm.
McBane learned early on that his classical training is what gives him his distinct flavor, and no matter how many arpeggiated synth plinks run through the album’s title track, his raw violin adds to and enhances the electronic rhythms already in place. Despite his one-man orchestration, this is not a cinematic album so much as a personal one, less interested in building towards a climactic moment than in finding its way through a groove.
Yes, tracks like “VCV Chaconne” brood with a drenched sense of worry, but not for a specific effect: sometimes you just gotta brood, and this song meets that moment. Buoy is an apt title for McBane’s premiere as a pure ambient artist, as these melodies are designed to keep all of our spirits afloat.
7. John Also Bennett — Στoν Eλaιώνa / Ston Elaióna (Shelter Press)
John Also Bennett has been in electronic spaces for years, dating back to his time in the 2010s band Forma, which oscillated between modern minimalism and tracks that approached pure synthpop. Having now settled firmly in his adopted home of Athens, Greece, the latest from Josh Also Bennett (also affectionately known as JAB) — Στoν Eλaιώνa / Ston Elaióna — serves as a love letter to his region: its blues skies, its opulent ruins, its storied history.
Accentuating simple key chords with his use of his prized bass flute, the songs off this record breathe at a meditation retreat rhythm, slowly soaking in daylight before exhaling it back out. This is no more apparent than on opener “Ston Elaióna”, which takes very simple and drawn-out tones to relax, to intone, to observe. The appropriately titled “Hail Storm” uses field recordings of actual dimly tapping hail to accentuate a calm that is close to the movements of a lava lamp, quietly circling, with a soft, warm light in an empty room.
The tracks luxuriate in their short run times, but never once does Στoν Eλaιώνa / Ston Elaióna sound scholarly or rigid. If anything, this is a reverent album, which will have echoes and reverberations well beyond the Ionian Sea.
6. Vega Trails — Sierra Tracks (Gondwana)
As with every year, we believe that the effect of a great ambient album doesn’t always need to come from an ambient musician. There have been many country, folk, and more purely electronic records on this list, but a common breeding ground for such crossover is the realm of chamber-jazz. With Sierra Tracks, Milo Fitzpatrick’s Vega Trails project takes on new import in that space, delivering a record that finds the remarkable balance of being hushed and opulent in equal measure.
Inspired by the foothills of his home in Madrid, Sierra Tracks merges grand piano, rich keyboards, and woodwind interludes aplenty to craft a piece of hushed beauty, as the ascending piano phrases in “Clarifantasia” rush to a quiet climax that dissipates as softly as morning fog. Melodic motifs drift in and out of the songs, giving them a gorgeous throughline that, in turn, makes standalone tracks like the bassoon-driven “When This is Over” stand out all the more.
At times approaching the verge of the dramatic, the whole of Sierra Tracks remains a lush listen, fitting for the ending credits of any truly inspired drama film, yet sounding as intimate as a tiny symphony composed just for you. A postcard sent with unencumbered affection.
5. Rindert Lammers — Thank You Kirin Kiki (Western Vinyl)
While the Netherlands-born Rindert Lammers has played around with prog rock and even spoken word ambient before, the loss of three of his closest loved ones in a skiing accident remarkably changed his life, pushing him away from his faith, into isolation, and into the movie theater that was a two-minute walk from his home. Soaking in film after film via a local movie pass, Lammers was particularly struck by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 masterpiece Shoplifters, so much so that the entirety of his proper solo debut Thank You Kirin Kiki is almost in tribute to it, the title a reference to the Japanese actress who played the grandmother.
Using his love of music and his love of cinema as a way to process his grief properly, this album is littered with tiny references, from song titles like “Opening Credits” to the way that the album closer has the toolkit of modern cinema themes but doesn’t at any point feel like a direct soundtrack. While opener “Summer in Shibuya” echoes its warm rays across both synth pads and yearning slide guitar, the rest of the album feels like a quiet meditation on love, both gained and lost, bound by its own unique melodic logic but never straying in its intent.
As PopMatters‘ Chris Ingalls wrote about the album earlier this year: “Rindert Lammers may use his love of cinema and music as an escape from death and sadness, but he gives that form of escape right back to the listener, in the form of 25 gorgeous minutes of deeply felt songs.”
4. Rival Consoles — Landscape from Memory (Erased Tapes)
Landscape from Memory is the ninth full-length album from Ryan Lee West’s Rival Consoles project, assembled from the timeless act of reassessing the past. By reviewing a “scrapbook” of audio snippets he had created and discarded over his career, he tried approaching these ideas with his contemporary mind and skills.
This is more apparent than on “Catherine”, where a typical skitter-synth twitches over a solid synth bassline before, at the halfway point, it brings a tone so analogue, so earthy, so ancient, it feels like it may be a whole decade old, if not longer. Yet the song doesn’t highlight the otherness of this texture so much as pick it up, dance with it, twirl it around in the air.
As much as Rival Consoles has developed a propulsive and forward-thinking signature to his sound, he’s still willing to play with it, and the galloping stop-start sounds that open “Gaivotas” make extraordinary moves flickering out of the left and right sides of your speakers at alternating times before giving way to loud synth pounds which have been cut and sliced in a fascinating way.
For some, Landscape from Memory sounds like the exact kind of record you’d expect from Rival Consoles at this point, but given that in each subsequent release his songwriting gets sharper, his productions get tighter, and he seems to grow in strength and power, who are we to stop him? This album may have been assembled from scraps from his past, but he’s using these elements to build himself a mighty and beautiful future.
3. Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)
The very first Sean Barker release, 2018’s Debiasing EP, doesn’t rely on any percussive instruments so much as it depends on the percussion of its own synth rhythms: with the right volume, intensity, and willingness to use negative space like a drumstick, Barker was provide a unique take on techno, keeping things propulsive without needing traditional beats how things have since changed.
On Stochastic Drift, Barker is working with textures much more natural: “Fluid Mechanics” features lightly tapped jazz cymbals, deep standup piano chords, and synths straight out of the Windham Hill catalog, granting space to a sound that is rich, developed, and dynamic. The reverb settings on these tracks are set to concert hall, where everything from percolating repeaters to lush basslines has a quiet bit of echo, as if Stochastic Drift has rented out the entire medium-sized theater to perform only for you, the listener.
A track like “Reframing”, in fact, does an exemplary job of reframing itself partway through, using a light synth loop to grow its instrumental palette into something that borders on a rave song before collapsing inwards on itself, all while still retaining the chilled-out vibes it was aiming for. What is remarkable about this Barker release is its pure accessibility, its ability to take heady concepts and abstract melodies and present them in a way that’s so immediate and relatable. Barker has come a long way in his time releasing music, and with this record, he’s Drift-ing towards something truly remarkable.
2. The Choir — Translucent (Galaxy21)
There are a lot of people who aren’t familiar with the Choir, and it’s understandable: we don’t expect most readers to be deeply familiar with the 1980s CCM movement, where Christian acts did their own bids at hair metal and rock. The Choir has always consisted of Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong, and often featured bassist Tim Chandler until his passing in 2018. The band played around with some Robert Smith-isms during their early days.
They evolved casually over the years, collecting a Dove Award and even a Grammy nomination, yet never breaking through to the mainstream in a significant way. Nearly four decades into their career, Translucent marks their first attempt at an ambient record, which is a truly logical progression given how mellowed out their more recent material has been.
What shocks about Translucent is just how staggeringly well composed it is. Opening with the epicly titled “Fire in the Heavens”, the band use pedal-looped guitar tones and oceans of reverb to craft a sound that often feels akin to sunlight reflecting over a rippling ocean tide. While the crackling, disintegrating synths of “You Don’t Have to Smile” feel boilerplate for a 2020s ambient album, the way the song shifts to a sharp melodic uplift at the halfway mark shows just how powerful a team the Choir has become.
They go dark on the aptly-titled “Cool Black Water”, which starts with e-bowed chords anchored to the listener’s soul before bringing in a low-end drum machine motif that gives the song structure and shape, occasionally letting a ghostly saxophone weave in for color and texture. Their melodies soar on the aptly-titled “Take to the Sky” and radiate a more stoic energy on “Chariot Race”, but most critically, they never sound unsure of their approach.
While this may be their first full-length in this genre, their chemistry and history with saxophonist Dan Michaels remain unparalleled. The Choir could jump into any style with full confidence given their creative second-hand with each other, but with their focused efforts, the group hasn’t given just “an” ambient album, but instead one of the year’s best.
1. Sheldon Agwu — Kintsugi (Sanctum)
Calling London-based guitarist and producer Sheldon Agwu’s debut album Kintsugi a jazz record doesn’t feel right. At times, even calling it an ambient release feels strange. While there are evocative guitar licks, slithering basslines, and steady percussive loops, Kintsugi is so casual in its approach to genre that it’s almost impossible to detect how daring this work actually is. Tracks like “Serendipity” fully exist on the ambient side of the musical spectrum, as echoing vocal keypads back quiet string plucks in modest reverb, and feel completely divorced from any other genre.
The closing soundscape “Archean” features whispers and bellows, voices and clanging, and exists as an intimate eight-minute epic that doesn’t resolve so much as it evaporates. These songs rub shoulders with the likes of “The Infinite Dream I Call You”, a solo guitar number that feels like it was plucked out of a sock hop jukebox recording but slowed down for efficacy, and the clattering stomp of “Airbender” would be coffeehouse cool were it not for those minor chords hinting at something slightly more sinister underneath.
When the saxophones lock in to the groove on the title track or Ylenia Tilli provides a spoken word portion to the mesmerizing mid-tempo thrust of “Meditation Ribbon Dance”, it’s clear that Agwu’s muse is both singular and polytheistic, pulling inspiration from a wide swath of courses and merging them into a powerful whole. Kintsugi has such a quiet vibe and such a personal creation that even Agwu may not recognize the rebellious spirit laced within these tracks, quietly placing his callused thumb against genre lines and deliberately smudging them until they become indistinguishable.
It’s a record that holds weight, conjures beautiful emotion, and proves quietly unclassifiable. It’s not just a remarkable debut: it’s the single best instrumental album we’ve heard in 2025.